Bear Pryde = Powerrr

The googly eyes, nude photos, and hand-drawn rainbow crayon squiggles that adorn the cover of this beguiling artifact point in several directions at once: outsider art, gay rainbow flag, childhood diary, amateur porn. Always is a guy named Alex Vivian making "extreme lo-fi" a capella that stands poised on a lonely 4-track precipice, with just a microphone and some footstomping to keep him company. On this song he loops his frail, Australian-accented voice, intoning queer slogans ("Bear pride equals power/ Bear pride equals freedom") over and over until these phrases stop affirming and start deforming. Gradual undercurrents of doubt ("Safety in numbers/ Or a community?") intrude into the chanting, and just as the self-harmonizing takes off, he starts grasping maniacally at the words ("Freedom! Freedom! Power! Power!") as if they were birds in flight, evasive and barely real. Simple, powerful, and very odd."